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Monthly Archives: November 2014

As this course comes to an end, there are a several things that I’ve realized and learned. I think they are important to share.

First, it takes a lot of work and planning to find images that do not belong to someone else or require a lengthy process to be able to use them. I found that it works best if I use my own personal pictures. This way students are exposed to authentic photos of animals, people, etc. I also find that it helps me to connect more to assignments that I am doing/creating for my students.

Second, I am not a huge fan of Excel. I struggled with the assignment using Excel as a gradebook. Therefore, I am grateful for the online software that my school district uses in order for us to input grades. I am becoming more familiar with Excel, but still not a fan 🙂 For some reason, I am confused by it. I was tasked with creating a “team” spreadsheet for my grade level at work, and I was proud of myself for doing it. This course has pushed me in the direction of learning a program, that I haven’t been the best at…I am thankful for this.

Finally, I learned that I really like digital storytelling. I had not had much, if any, exposure to it before this semester. For both of my courses I created digital stories. I now see the importance of this in the classroom. I will definitely begin to use this in my classroom, and I would like to have my kindergarteners create their own digital stories this year. I think a great starting point will be for students to create their own personal story, and then we can progress into something more complex.

Overall, I really enjoyed the course and what I have learned from it. I am still hoping for additional help creating K level rubrics for the students to read/understand themselves…if you have any suggestions 🙂

Creating rubrics is one of my least favorite things to do… I am a kindergarten teacher, and it is often difficult to assess my students’ abilities using a rubric. In kindergarten, students aren’t graded using the tradition A-F scale. We use Satisfactory, Needs Improvement, and Unsatisfactory. The more I thought about the rubrics we are using in this class, the more I tried to apply them to my classroom. I finally decided that I could fit the rubric criteria into these three categories. I have tried to implement some rubrics in my classroom using these criteria, and I am really interested to see if it will work.

I have also been trying to think of ways students can assess themselves on a rubric. Right now, my students are able to assess themselves against our learning goal, and I think this may not be too much of a stretch for them. I would love suggestions on ways to do this in a kindergarten classroom!

As a class, I showed students an example of a digital storytelling project. We discussed what needs to be part of the project, and then I let the students rate the project. I was absolutely amazed how well the students were able to pick out what was missing from the project. I had a student who told me that he would say it “needs improvement.” When I asked him why, he said that the student used a lot of cartoon pictures instead of real pictures. I was so impressed, because he was hitting on another kindergarten standard that we hadn’t really talked about yet. Everyday I am so amazed at how much my students can do 🙂

Please let me know your experience with rubrics and if you have any suggestions for me!

Here is the link to my rubric for the digital story. I would appreciate any feedback 🙂

It is for Kindergarten students working on a project regarding living and non living things. I did struggle with the language. I found it difficult to get my point across while making the language easier for K students to understand. I would love help with this 🙂

This digital story was created using Prezi. It is intended for Kindergarten aged students learning about living and non living things in science. Please view the presentation and let me know your feedback 🙂